Part 51 (1/2)
CHAPTER XXVI
During the next few months, the necessity for bracing Teddy and his sisters to meet fate threw Bob Collingham's personal preoccupations more and more into the background. All that was implied by the fact that Jennie was his wife and he was her husband went into this single supreme task.
Habit came to his aid by fitting them all to the situation as though they had never been in any other. They grew used to the fact that Teddy was in jail and might come out of it only by one exit. Teddy grew used to it himself. The family, once more at Marillo, grew used to the odd arrangement by which Bob and Jennie worked together and lived apart. The Collinghams grew used to the thought of the Folletts, and the Folletts to that of the Collinghams.
”You get used to anything,” Junia commented to her husband, as one who has made a new discovery. ”It seems to me as if Edith's living in that flat on Cathedral Heights and keeping only one maid is all I'd ever dreamed for her.”
To Bob, this wonting of the mind was the easier because Wray stayed in California, his absence making it possible to leave in abeyance the subjects that couldn't yet be touched upon.
The first chance of fortifying the three girls seemed to present itself on a night in that autumn when it was still warm enough to sit on the screened piazza. His car was, as usual, before the door, and in an hour or so he would be making his way to Marillo. As he had returned to his work at the bank, his spare time was now in the evenings.
”If you want to do something for me, Gladys, there's a way.”
He said this in reply to an aspiration of all three, in which the youngest sister had been spokesman.
Gladys's voice was eager and affectionate.
”What way, Bob? Tell us. We'll do anything.”
Smoothing Pansy's back as she lay on his crossed knees, he considered how best to make it clear. Gladys sat close to him, as the one who most easily took him fraternally. Gussie, in whom he stirred an unusual self-consciousness, kept herself more aloof. Altogether in the shadow, Jennie was seemingly withdrawn, and yet more intensely aware of him than anyone.
”It's this way,” he tried to explain: ”Living is like climbing a mountainside. You drag yourself up to a ledge where you can stand and take breath, and feel that you've reached somewhere. Then, just as you think that you can camp there and be comfortable for the rest of your life, you find yourself summoned to move to the next ledge higher up. At that some of us get discouraged; some fall off and go down; but most of us brace ourselves for another great big test. Do you see?”
Gladys answered, doubtfully, ”I see-a little.”
”Well then, the thing we need for the test is pluck, isn't it?”
Gussie spoke dreamily.
”We need pluck for everything.”
”So we do; and I often think that we don't make enough of it. Pluck is different from courage, because it's-how shall I say?-it's a little more cheery and intimate. Courage is like a Sunday suit that you wear for big occasions; but pluck is your everyday clothes, which you need all the time and feel easy in. Courage is n.o.ble and heroic-something we'd be shy about claiming. Pluck is the courage of the common man, which anyone can feel he has a right to.”
”I can't,” Gussie confessed. ”I'm the awfulest coward.”
With this Gladys agreed.
”Yes, Gus is a regular scarecat. I'm not afraid of hardly anything.”
”We're all cowards in our way; but we could all be plucky when we mightn't like to call ourselves brave. Do you get what I mean?” Gladys made a sound of a.s.sent which seemed to answer for all three. ”Well, what I'm trying to say is this: That the time has come when we're all being summoned-you three-and me-and Teddy-and all of us-to pull up to another ledge. It's going to be tough, but we can make up our minds that we can go through with it. I don't mean just knowing that we _must_ go through with it, but knowing that we _can_.”
There was silence for the two or three minutes during which the girls thought this over.
”You said,” Gladys reasoned, ”that it was something we could do for you.
I don't see-”
”You'd do it for me, because it's easier to pull with strong people rather than with weak ones. You see, this is something which no one of us can meet alone; we must all meet it together, and the stronger each of us is the stronger we all are. Being strong is a matter of knowing that you're strong, just as being weak is the same. If I was sure that none of you was going to break down, I could be stronger myself, and we could all buck up Teddy.”
After another brief silence, Gladys sighed.